Sunday, February 13, 2005

The thing that most often amazes me about my fellow citizens is how many of them are completely oblivious to world history (let alone American history).

Both the right wing and the left wing suffer from this historical blindness, but in different ways.

In the case of Iran, I see right wing comments about Iran wanting the "The Bomb" to that they can use it for "terror". This just goes to show how stupid and out of touch the right is.

Since you didn't learn this in your history books I will fill you in on a few historical points. Most of this you can find by doing a simple internet search, some of this I got from the late Coronal Robert G. Temple (USAF) who was attached to the Iranian mission in the late fifties and early sixties.

The first thing you need to know is that Iran has been trying to have a democratic government since the 1880's. During this time Britain managed to gain an economic foot hold in Iran.

Democracy had met with a little success, a constitution was drawn up and was in place for a while when Republican forces ousted Mozaffar o-Din Shah and created a parliament in 1906

This sort of came to an end when the Russian and British governments decided in 1907 that they in fact owned Iran and divided the country in half with the Russians taking the north and the British taking the south. (This was done as "sphere of influence" rather than just taking the government over).

In 1921 Reza Shah took power in a coup d'état. To fight off the British and Russian influence he made several deals with Germany, Italy and France in an effort to get out from under British control.

When WWII broke out Reza declared Iran neutral, but this did not stop the British and Russians from invading.

The British put Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the son of Reza Shah on the throne as a puppet ruler in 1941. During all this time the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), owned by the British government, continued to extract and market Iranian oil (something that Iranians were not all that happy about).

Mohammad Reza Shah does whatever he can to gather power and control from the elected government and to return to the days of total monarchy. He met with some success, but not enough.

Britain does everything it can to force Iran to let Britain continue to rape its natural resources. But by this time the British empire is just a shadow of its former self and can't quite pull it off.

Britain asks the US for help, but Truman turns them down.

So from '51 to '53 Iran has a moderate, democratic, secular government that is duly elect by, and holds power through the will of the people of Iran. This is exactly what the US claims it wants to see in the mid-east.

Mosaddeq does everything he can to create a progressive western style democracy,Mohammad Reza Shah flees to Iraq to avoid prosecution for high crimes.

This is perhaps the best example we have seen of what the right wing says it wants to promote in the mid ease, except for that one little point about nationalizing the country's oil. The poor British are having to buy their oil just like everyone else.

Eisenhower, a right wing republican, assumed the presidency of the United States on January 20 1953. The British make contact with Eisenhower very quickly and soon worked out a deal. The deal involved certain preferred trade status when it came to buying oil from BP (British petroleum, the same BP that sells gas in the US and put the fix in for the big California oil shortage of a few years ago).

Eisenhower agreed to lend the British help from the CIA to get the oil back into British hands. They did this quite successfully by overthrowing the democratic government of Iran and reinstalling Mohammad Reza Shah as emperor.

The CIA and US military intelligence pulls this off without a hitch, using the excuse that Iran was going to make alliance with the USSR (which was bullshit, remember the Iranians hated the Russians as much as the British, for the same reasons).

So the US put the Shah back in power, and for twenty six years he oversaw a bloody reign of terror as a puppet dictator. The CIA helped him to build the SAVAK (along with special aid from the Mosad) which was nothing more than a tool for oppression.

So the Iranians, rather than seeing their dream of democracy be realized, got to have twenty six years of a bloody handed nutcase ruling them because he was being backed by the US.

So you want to know why Iran wants "the Bomb"? Simple, they are afraid of us. They know that we only give lip service to Democracy , and will install totalitarian dictatorships to make sure that we get the oil that we think we deserve.

They want the bomb because that know that they cannot win a conventional war with us and they hope that the threat of a nuclear explosion will make us have second thoughts.

All our claiming that Iran is a terrorist nation is just our Karma coming home to roost. If we had really supported democracy we would not be in the position that we are now with Iran. We created the conditions that allowed Khomeini to come to power through our own greed and because we don't really support democracy, we support us being able to loot other people's natural resources.

The Right Wingers always cry Democracy , but it is always really about oil.

So why do the Iranians hat us and call us the "Great Satan"? Because we gave them 26 years of a ruthless despot and we made sure that he stayed in power and could do whatever he wanted as long as he kept the oil flowing. Not because we are a predominately Christian nation, but because we are a predominately greedy nation. They hate us because we wanted their oil and we didn't want to pay them a fair price for it.

Iran may have the bomb, and if they do they will use it if they feel threatened, they think they have nothing left to loose and the ones who remember life under Mohammad Reza Shah don't want that again at any price.

Like I sad, this is our Karma, the price we pay for being hypocrites. If we had supported democracy in the mid east none of this would be happening now. But we chose greed instead and now we are looking at a people who have Nukes and think they have nothing left to loose.

This has been a very short history lesson, I have left a lot out, none of what I have not mentioned makes the West look any better. You can check out the facts yourself if you have any doubts, they are quite easy to find.

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